


It stays the same

by Nakimochiku



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 20:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8028190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: In which Hamilton learns to survive in the aftermath of the duel.





	It stays the same

I

He hits Burr in the shoulder. Burr’s bullet whizzes off into the trees, as bad a shot as ever. Hamilton does not feel bad when blood spurts across the grass, red as the steady dawn spilling over the horizon, so that all the river looks as red as the blood before his feet.

Burr drops to his knees first, then to his side with a pained cry before Van Ness can catch him, gun joining his blood in the grass.

Hamilton snorts; really, Burr has always been so very dramatic; its what brought them here to begin with. He lowers his gun, considers the smear of gunpowder on his thumb from the trigger, the slightly burned dots like constellations on his skin. The sound of two gunshots still echo in his ears,

He thinks of reminding Burr, “If you’re going to challenge gentlemen to duels, it’s shameful to come out of them shot. Start your fights and finish them too.” He steps forward to do just that but the doctor is crowding over him, and his second is urging him away.

Eliza is still asleep when he returns. He burns the note he wrote and crawls in beside her.

II

He is sorry that Burr dies. When people ask, he is not sure what his intention was. To maim? To kill? Did he mean to shoot at all? He wishes they would stop asking because it’s done now, and Burr is dead. What difference does his intention make when the result is the same? Eliza gives him a look throughout dinner when they receive the news, fingers tight on her fork. She hasn’t really eaten, pushing her food around her plate like a single bite sickens her. Hamilton’s plate is damn near licked clean. “His poor daughter.” she says when the children have been taken up to bed. “All alone--”

“Theodosia Burr has always been a smart girl.” Hamilton pointedly does not add _Burr raised her that way_ , because Eliza already looks queasy. “If there’s anyone who could make it through this, it's her.” Eliza nods, but doesn’t look entirely convinced.

He is sorry Burr died for what he said. But he’s not sorry he said it.

III

Theodosia Burr Alston is exactly like her father, and not like him at all. She has his eyes, his collected cool demeanor, and it seems like just yesterday he was shaking her little hand outside Burr’s office, and she barely came up to his waist. There’s something livelier about her though, soft and warm and approachable in a way that Burr never was. Hamilton meets her in his office. She stands by the door, pretty and neat as a ghost in all black, her face carefully and modestly veiled. The veil does not cover the flames of her eyes. The flames do not hide the bags beneath them.

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and Hamilton is reminded again of Burr; the way he would wait him out, wait for him to speak. Invariably, Hamilton would always break their silences first. This time, he waits.

Her voice does not shake, her hands don’t tremble. “I won’t ever forgive you. You’ve robbed me of something precious and irreplaceable.” the words are frosty and distant, like she’s delivering the message for someone else. Burr was like that too. Burr always made his most pointed arguments like he had no hand in them one way or the other.

That’s why, Hamilton thinks, Burr always got his way.

“I don’t want to be forgiven.” Hamilton says. Her eyes flare, go liquid, and yes, she looks exactly like her father, and it’s a tragedy. But she says nothing more.

She closes the door as politely as Burr used to close it on their arguments, with a definitive and insulting click of the handle, and a passive little thud.

IV

He rereads their letters. He starts at the very beginning, smudged notes from battlefields reporting movements, observances, prayers. Burr always said just what he meant in his letters, when he had no fear of the opinions of others. He could be affectionate, hopeful, wary. He could be playful.

Hamilton wonders when he forgot.

He rereads their business correspondence, when they were both lawyers, less letters and more notes they left on each others desks or beneath the doors or stuffed in the others coat pockets. Burr was intelligent, like the crack of a whip, like the point of a rapier, like the strike of a snake.

Hamilton wonders when he forgot.

He rereads the letters leading to the duel, the careful curl of his hand writing. Its the same as all his other letters, the same syntax, the same casual strokes of his pen, only cutting into the paper a little with the force of his anger, as carefully restrained as his words. There is no humour here, like their army days. No crawling over each other to build something greater like their joint cases.

There's nothing left of the Burr that he used to know in these letters that have remained the same over thirty years.

Hamilton wonders how he became so lost.

V

Men speak of being haunted by the men they kill. Hamilton doesn’t think he’s haunted at all. Burr is barely a passing thought. Sometimes he will see the same well deep eyes, the same stone smooth skin, the same crinkle of crow's feet in a rigid smile, and he will remember.

Sometimes he will remember something funny Burr said, the time he lent him a coat, sharing coffee with him in the early morning, knocking on his door in the middle of the night.

Unbidden, he will hear the curled smokey quality of Burr’s laugh, the dulled edge of his taunts, the real sting of his insults, the warm buttery sound of his sleepy voice.  Worse still, he’ll remember the heat of his palms, of his mouth, of his breath. But he is not haunted the way others might understand it.

“To take another man’s life is something you can't shake.” He tells Alexander Junior and James, his eldest boys. They nod as though they understand, but they do not.

He hopes they never will.

He’s not haunted by Burr himself, he's haunted by what they used to have.

VI

He's sorry Burr died. If he had lived, they could have gotten passed this.

(They never would have gotten passed this.)

They could have spat real apologies like poison and found some clarity between them after all the smoke.

(They never would have said they were sorry, not even if they really meant it.)

They could have found each other again, like they used to before. They could have searched the other out, found soft laughing eyes, a babbling river mouth, clever fingers.

(But there's nothing left, they both turned hard, no room for anything as paltry as love.)

“There you are,” they could have said. “I’d forgotten.”

(They never would have gotten passed this.)

VII

Fuck Burr. Fuck his looming presence, his fingerprints on every aspect of his life. Fuck his goddamn ghost.

Fuck Theodosia Burr Alston’s visit. Fuck the disinterested glint of her eyes, the pallidness of her cheeks like grief has sickened her. She doesn't wear black anymore, but somehow soft yellow just makes her look more drawn and ill. Fuck how guilty she's trying to make him feel, just by showing her face.

“I've come to forgive you.” She does not sound forgiving. “My father did not want me to blame you.” She sounds bitter, like the words sting, like she's trying to mean them.

“I told you I didn't want forgiveness.”

“That’s too bad isn't it, Mister Hamilton?” She smiles as thin as a knife, and she's her father made flesh and blood again. “You'll get it whether you want it or not.” Hamilton grits his teeth. She takes a seat opposite his desk, gathering her skirts around her elegantly. “I read my Father’s letters a thousand times it seems. He was very curt.”

Hamilton snorts. “Of course. I wouldn't expect anything else.” He leans back in his chair. “So, what did he say, Don’t be angry if Hamilton is a better shot?”

She smiles that thin smile. “Something to that effect. He didn't mention you at all, actually.” She's quiet a moment, and Hamilton wonders if that's really true. “Like I said, the note was curt. He said he loved me, he'd be with me always. And then said “accept victory and defeat both with grace, dignity and humility.” I wondered at that.” He lets her talk, but she goes quiet, the same deep thoughtful silences her father was prone to. He sees Burr in her, in the furrow if her brow, the distracted tap of her fingers. He remembers the shape of him by the hearth, smoking a pipe. Fuck that memory.

"And?" He urges when it seems she won't say anything more.

She stands. “My forgiving you is all three of those.” She turns, steadying herself on the back of the chair. Hamilton stands to offer her an arm, but she doesn't take it. “Good day, mister Hamilton.”

What she means is fuck you, Alexander Hamilton.

VIII

Hamilton imagines death like an old friend with a hand on the back of his neck, tastes it with wine at dinner, feels it in the warmth of another living human.

He never imagined Burr would die first.

He wonders how Burr felt, just before the duel. His eyes had been wide, like he was on a ride he couldn't get off of and didn’t know how to scream. His hands hadn’t trembled, not that it helped his god awful aim. He’d closed his eyes and counted backwards, and steeled himself. Hamilton had watched his shoulders tighten, watched his chin tilt up with feigned grace and unconcern, trying to appear aloof.

He was always trying to appear above it all, even when he was waist deep in the mud with the rest of them.

If he looks back on it, Hamilton can admit that had infuriated him. He’d been so angry,  wanted nothing more than to drag him down. So he shot him.

He remembers Burr telling him once pride goes before the fall. He wonders now whose pride led them to that beach at dawn, and which one of them really fell when Burr collapsed in a puddle of blood.

IX

There’s a letter on his desk from Theodosia Burr Alston. Her writing is neater than her father’s ugly scrawl. He thinks he will spend the rest of his days measuring her against her father, to try and find something left of him in the world that isn’t all shadows and memory. It’s a copy of a proposal in Burr’s hand, and a little note that says “He was angry because you didn’t know him.”

Hamilton reads over it, traces his fingers over Burr’s writing, imagines his hand against the very same pages, finds suddenly he’s been haunted by a ghost he’s denied all along.

He puts his head down and weeps.

X

People ask what he intended when he shot Burr while he is out with his family. Eliza’s fingers grow tight on his elbow because she hates his answer. But he smiles shamelessly and says, “My meaning is the result,” and lets them take that as they will.

“I shouldn’t have killed him.” He tells Eliza privately. “To take a man’s life is something you can’t shake.”

“You should have apologized.” Eliza answers gently, hand warm on his shoulder so he once again feels the chilled fingers of death.

“I should have apologized.” He agrees.

He once told Burr he was poetry. A thousand words with a thousand meanings, like the many reflected images in a shattered mirror. Burr had laughed that quiet, condescending laugh, breathy, eyes crinkling and glowing and warm. Without saying so, he disagreed.

He stands by what he said then; he has read the whole thing over a thousand times, and always comes to the same end, but sees a different meaning every time.


End file.
